Evening Briefing: Here's what you need to know at the end of the day: image via The New York Times @nytimes, 2 February 2017

A Sessions Explainer

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
When in these sessions of gratifying silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I think of the past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
I lament my failure to achieve all that I wanted,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
And I sorrowfully remember that I wasted the best years of my life:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
Then I can cry, although I am not used to crying,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
For dear friends now hid in death's unending night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
And cry again over woes that were long since healed,
And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight:
And lament the loss of many things that I have seen and loved:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
Then can I grieve over past griefs again,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
And sadly repeat (to myself) my woes
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
The sorrowful account of griefs already grieved for,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
Which (the account) I repay as if I had not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
But if I think of you while I am in this state of sadness, dear friend,
All losses are restor'd and sorrows end.
All my losses are compensated for and my sorrow ends.

A timeline of Jeff Sessions’s ties to President Trump and meetings with Russia: image via The New York Times @nytimes, 2 February 2017

The attorney general is the latest official to be caught between his words and the truth: image via NYT Opinion @nytopinion, 2 February 2017

Sergey Kislyak has been
described as a soft-spoken man whose abundant charm gives way to
firmness in defending Russia on American soil.: photo by Cliff Owen/AP, 2 March 2017

#Gender advocacy needs to reckon with, rather than deny or ignore, the #racism built into #feminist movements: tweet via Reading The Pictures @ReadingThePix, 2 March 2017

White Privilege and the Pussy Hat: Reading the Pictures, 2 March 2017

The global circulation of the pink pussy hat as a symbol
of feminism took on an increasingly commodified tone recently when it
walked down Angela Missoni’s fashion runway in Milan, Italy on the heads
of glamorous, super-thin, female-presenting models. Since
commodification often accompanies mass social movements, this is not an
unexpected development. Beyond popular appropriations of social justice
advocacy, though, it is worth thinking about how this spectacle of pink
normativity once again imposes a radicalized claim of gender
universalism that has long haunted feminism movements.

White supremacy has plagued feminism since well before Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony denounced the 15th
Amendment for according African American men the right to vote before
women. Well within the mainstream of racial sentiment in 1869, they
wrote in the women’s suffrage journal, The Revolution:

What reason have we to suppose the
African would be more just and generous than the Saxon has been?…how
insulting to put every shade and type of manhood above our heads, to
make laws for educated refined, wealthy women….

Divisions that split the woman’s suffrage movement for most of the late 19th century appeared to heal by the early years of the next century as advocates came together to fight for the passage of the 19th
Amendment. Subsequent struggles for civil rights led to further
activism for gender, sexuality and disability equality. Judicial and
legislative actions have secured legal rights for marginalized people in
ways that were unimaginable in the first decades after the failed dream
of Reconstruction. The failure of legal rights to secure social,
cultural and political justice, however, has compelled people to once
again take to the streets to march for reproductive justice, pay equity,
health care, climate change and other pressing concerns. And yet
something remains amiss in the unifying symbol of the pussy hat.

Among the myriad photographs of January 21st
Women’s Marches from around the world, one powerfully captures the
contradictory forces that have haunted feminist movements since the 19thcentury.
In the center of the composition leading this post, three blond white
women in pussy hats stand with their backs to the Capitol, one taking a
selfie while the other two check their phones. In front of them, a black
woman eats a lollipop while holding a sign: “Don’t forget: White Women
Voted for Trump.” Seemingly unaware of the women behind her, the black
woman gazes towards something beyond the photographic frame. Just as she
remains isolated from the white women protesters, they appear unaware
of her critique. Herein lies the dilemma captured by the camera’s gaze –
even as feminisms have (often successfully) promoted the possibilities
of change through collective action, intractable racial divisions
continue to plague the very ideal of unity.

January 21 signaled an important moment
of possibility sparked by the outrage against the violent misogyny
associated with the election of Donald Trump. This photograph, however,
asks viewers to grapple with the historical persistence of white
privilege in the feminist movement. Re-appropriating the color pink as a
symbol of unity, the color of princess culture made popular by Disney
and Mattel, resonates with now-discredited 1970s claims of “sisterhood
is powerful.” Intended to call attention to patriarchal oppression,
other feminists quickly pointed out that this universalizing slogan
excluded women of color, gender non-conforming people and queers. But,
the slogan struck, evident in the posters, tee shirts, and bumper
stickers that helped to popularize and commodify mainstream feminism.
Like “sisterhood is powerful” and like the pussy hat, the title, “The
Women’s March,” seems tone-deaf to its universalizing assumptions. Why
“women” in an era when transgender people are gaining greater visibility
and more rights, even as they face vicious pushback as with the
so-called bathroom bill passed in North Carolina in 2016?

Of course, no protest movement has ever
been pure and uncontaminated. Even as marginalized people call on those
with privilege to be inclusive, not all white participants in women’s
marches are tone deaf to the racism associated with the pussy hat.
Photographs of the January 21 march also depict signs carried by white
women, along with those of marginalized folks, which acknowledge and
denounce this feminist history of privilege and exploitation. One
photograph features a white woman wearing a pink tee shirt holding a
sign in front of her face that says: “White Women: we have a lot to make
up for.” Smaller letters state: “voted for a
racist, ableist, jingoist, misogynist con man” among other language
about cultural appropriation and erasing women of color from feminist
histories.

As this last image demands, gender
advocacy needs to reckon with, rather than ignore or deny, the racism
that has been built into the fabric of feminist movements. And, this in
turn should also remind us to acknowledge how ethnocentrism,
heteronormativity, ableism, and classism have likewise structured this
and other movements for social justice. The challenge for feminist
activists is to reconcile histories of oppression with strategizing for
change in ways that resist the seductions of popular slogans and
commodified symbols.

You know Russian Amb Kislyak who Jeff Sessions met w/ last year? He was on the House flr on Tues ahead of Trump's #JointAddress (Via Getty)Reading The Pictures Retweeted Frank Thorp VReading The Pictures added,Fox in the hen house. (Or these days, the fox house.) image via Reading The Pictures @ReadingThePix, 2 March 2017

Not to be missed in political tornado. States carting off 1st amendment with new anti-protest laws. Photo @AP_Images: image via Reading The Pictures @ReadingThePix, 2 March 2017

NYT OpinionVerified account@nytopinion

Trump is willing to say whatever he needs to say to get an audience to like him. Reading The Pictures Retweeted NYT OpinionReading The Pictures added,Not to mention, #Ivanka and the seating chart.image via Reading The Pictures @ReadingThePix, 2 March 2017

The New York TimesVerified account@nytimes

Morning Briefing: Here's what you need to know to start your dayReading The Pictures Retweeted The New York TimesReading The Pictures added,All
those news photos coming back as allegation. This one, a punctuation
mark that you're under oath on national television, sir. #Sessions.image via Reading The Pictures @ReadingThePix, 2 March 2017

Refugees and migrants
from different African and Asian countries crowd on board a wooden boat,
as they wait to be assisted by an NGO, 14 miles North of Sabratha,
Libya, early Thursday, March 2, 2017: photo by Santi Palacios/AP, 2 March 2017

A man from Jartum,
Sudan, looks at the sea aboard Golfo Azzurro, the Spanish NGO Proactiva
Open Arms rescue ship, after being rescued off the Libyan coast, 14
miles North of Sabratha, Libya, early Thursday, March 2, 2017.: photo by Santi Palacios/AP, 2 March 2017

Families flee clashes
between Iraqi forces and Islamic State group militants in western Mosul
on Thursday, March 2, 2017. The United Nations announced that
displacement rates over the past week have been the highest since the
operation began in October with 28,400 people displaced from Mosul's
west since the push to retake it Began last month.: photo by Susannah
George/AP, 2 March 2017

Imad Enchassi, center,
leads a group of Muslims gathered at the Oklahoma State Capitol in
prayer in Oklahoma City on Thursday, March 2, 2017.: photo by Jessie
Wardarski/Tulsa World via AP, 2 March 2017

Residents Valerie
McAvoy with daughter Jayda Weathersby, 9, hug as they survey tornado
damage of their neighborhood in Naplate, Ill., on Wednesday, March 1,
2017. Communities across Illinois are cleaning up after deadly storms
producing tornadoes moved through much of the Midwest.: photo by Zbigniew
Bzdak/Chicago Tribune via AP, 1 March 2017

Dave Jenkins begins to
clean up after strong storms hit Monday night in a neighborhood near
Niles High school Wednesday, March 1, 2017, in in Niles, Mich.: photo by Santiago Flores/South Bend Tribune via AP, 1 March 2017

Afghan security forces
respond to a suicide attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, Wednesday, March 1,
2017. A pair of suicide bombings, both claimed by the Taliban, struck
the Afghan capital, an Afghan official said.: photo by Rahmat Gul/AP, 1 March 2017

Kashmiri school
children attend their first day after a three-month winter break in
Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, Wednesday, March 1, 2017.: photo by Mukhtar Khan/AP, 1 March 2017